NCMA Park, Raleigh
Brian, Sylvia and Fitz Roy are constantly on the lookout for new microadventures near our home in Raleigh, NC. “Microadventure is a term coined by Alistair Humphreys for “an adventure that is short, simple, local, cheap – yet still fun, exciting, challenging, refreshing and rewarding.”
We also define a microadventure as a little adventure that prepares us for the bigger adventures to come.
Not long ago we discovered an excellent place for a Microadevnture — the North Carolina Museum of Art. One might not picture a day at the museum as being a whole lot of excitement and fun. But in this case, we never even saw the inside of the building nor its collection.
Instead, we wandered about the impressive grounds that surround the museum. There is no doubt that this constitutes one of Raleigh’s finest outdoor spaces.
In fact, it’s so good that we’re surprised we didn’t stumble onto this sooner.
Officially named the Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park, the space is a sprawling expanse of fields bordered by woodlands, with man-made spaces and curious scattered throughout. As is the hallmark of a great urban space, it feels much larger than its 164 total acres, and (with the exception of traffic noise from nearby I-440) gives one little indication of its close proximity to a downtown location. (In this case, just minutes away.)
This is an excellent park for dogs, and on any given day one might see hundreds here. As dog walking parks go, we in fact rank this second only to E. Carroll Joyner Park, which is located in Wake Forest and nearer to our home.
One through the maze of trails near the parking area, which are bordered by high grass, one enters a wide open area with large scale artworks interspersed. This is a very good place not only for walking dogs, but for training dogs, and especially excitable dogs. Which Fitz sometimes is. Here, you can back a combustible hound as far of the trail as need to to give them space to examine other dogs, children, bikers, joggers etc at a safe distance.
Although the property backs right up to the museum, a mostly charmless building of the ‘Frank Lloyd Wrong’ variety, the building itself is not visible from much of the park lands, hidden by trees or folds in the land. We always find it interesting how even in seemingly wide open areas, large objects manage to ‘hide in plain sight.’
One of the few man made objects that does intrude on the horizon is a large smokestack from an adjacent, municipal owner property. The stack was part of some building torn down decades ago, and now stands alone like a monolith. In fact, it’s almost become a sort of art object in itself, an enigmatic relic from another time whose function has ceased and whose sole purpose is now to simply exist.
Speaking of art objects, at least a dozen ‘public art pieces’ are scattered around the park. Some of these are interesting, some less so. Perhaps the most famous of these are a trip of massive hoops embedded in the ground called “Gyre.” Of all the art pieces this is the one that attracts the most attention.
Like any great pieces of public art, Gyre dominates the space without seeming to intrude. People are drawn to it, not forced to it. What is it’s meaning? We don’t know, but it’s interesting to speculate. All three loops can be views from one end or the other as a sort of tunnel or portal to something. For us they might be a conduit to happiness in the outdoors.
To Fitz, they are a convenient thing to pee on.
One of the most interesting sections of the park is along its wooded edge, where the trail system (paved for much of the way) fades to dirt paths and eventually joins back up with the paved Capital City Greenway — the downtown recreational bike path. We personally prefer the Neuse River Greenway, which is far better designed for biking, but this section of greenway is nice too, if you can stand the sharp hills.
There is also a large catchment pond here too, which we didn’t even get to explore. We’ll save this for next time.
We have spent good money on things that gave us far less enjoyment than the Art Center Park, which cost only a few drops of gas. We’ll definitely go here again soon. Brian, Sylvia and Fitz are very much appreciators of this particular art.
